


Every Stop a New Departure

by the_rck



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different Backstory for Some Characters, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Kidnapping, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Siblings, Stalking, threat of sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27811921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: In which Mamoru's mother has a backbone and knows how to manage a corporate (and criminal) empire. Poor Reiji. Everyone told him not to take his boat out that day. His wife, brother, and teenage son all say so.From Mamoru's point of view, all of this is both better and worse than canon. Things change for some other people and not for others.Twenty or so years later, Fujimiya Ran is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets rescued by (and then kidnapped by) a quartet of armed men with cat breed code names.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	Every Stop a New Departure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cerberusia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/gifts).



> References to setting consistent levels of homophobia and fear of coming out to parents (but the parents are only referenced). Including a gay man showing up for an informal omiai in order not to have to have that talk with his mother yet.
> 
> Schuldig being the creepiest creeper ever to creep with a side of non-consensual touching. The M rating is mostly for this.
> 
> Schwarz being Schwarz and the Takatoris being equally but differently screwed up relative to the canon versions. The rest of the M rating is for this.
> 
> I think I've caught all instances of me using the wrong name for various characters, but I can't be 100% sure, so I apologize if anything slipped through.
> 
> The title is from Jin Ha's "The Detached" (as translated by the author).

Mamoru didn't remember learning to be quiet, learning to watch, learning to piece things together and draw conclusions. He also didn't remember when he first realized that there were things that everyone in the family knew but that no one ever discussed.

He did, however, remember when he started to understand why those topics were conversational pit traps to be avoided. He was twelve and was looking at a list he'd made of the things he knew but wasn't allowed to say.

First, his cousin Ouka's mother wasn't Uncle Shuichi's so conveniently-- and probably non-existent-- dead wife. There weren't any photographs of the woman except for the black framed one in the family shrine, and the marriage paperwork had clearly been forged. It was shoddy work. Of course, no one outside of the family was ever going to see it.

Second, Ouka was probably not the daughter of his Uncle Shuichi no matter what the paperwork said. Uncle Shuichi was carefully doting and affectionate, but it was never spontaneous. Hirofumi-nii adored Ouka and would step in if anyone-- even Mother-- so much as spoke to her harshly, but while nobody disliked Ouka, nobody else valued her either.

Third, Grandfather took medications that ought not be taken together. They made his mind fuzzy, and they meant that he fell asleep in the middle of conversations.

Fourth, the mental effect seemed to be why the doctor prescribed those medications. The doctor worked for Mother.

Fifth, Hirofumi-nii both loved and hated Mother. His obedience and deference never wavered, though.

Sixth, Hirofumi-nii was only now old enough to begin taking over parts of the family business but was-- technically-- the head of the family since their father's death.

Seventh, their father's death had been very unfortunate. So very tragic and unexpected. And so very rapidly ruled a boating accident. Mamoru didn't even remember his father as anything but a black framed photograph.

Eighth, Mother had very frightening minions.

Ninth, Masafumi-nii was studying biochemistry with a sideline in very creepy human research.

Tenth, the only part of that that seemed to bother anyone was that Masafumi-nii wasn't discreet about his work.

Eleventh, Uncle Shuichi treated Mother as if she were gentle, fragile, and valuable. It was different from how Hirofumi-nii treated her; Hirofumi-nii treated her as volatile and potentially deadly but still beloved.

Twelfth, Hirofumi-nii was smarter than Masafumi-nii or Uncle Shuichi. He might not be smarter than Mother, but he was very nearly as ruthless.

Thirteenth, neither Mamoru nor Ouka were even supposed to notice any of that. Mamoru wasn't sure what Ouka had or hadn't noticed, but he thought that Mother was less fond of Ouka than she was of her sons and that Uncle Shuichi was less fond of everybody than he was of Mother.

Fourteenth, Mother and Hirofumi-nii were both very fond of Mamoru, but they seemed to have different expectations from him. That balance was going to need careful management going forward.

Mamoru shredded his notes and burned the fragments. Then he used a rock to crush the ashes. He flushed those ashes down the toilet over the course of two weeks. He didn't want to go too fast and risk blocking the line to the sewer.

A plumber might ask Mother why there were ashes in the line. Well, probably not because water soaked ashes mixed with shit and toilet paper would probably look a lot like shit and toilet paper without the ashes.

Over the next month, Mamoru researched the chemical composition of ink and paper and what combustion did to those compounds. 

He also borrowed some of Masafumi-nii's old textbooks about human biochemistry, specifically one focused on potential paths of absorption and metabolization for a variety of types of drugs. It wasn't quite what he was looking for, but it was kind of fascinating.

The sewer line didn't back up, though, so it was entirely to satisfy his curiosity. The next time Mamoru had to burn something, he'd be better prepared.

He never forgot that his mother was dangerous, but he also remembered that his mother loved all three of her sons. Anything his brothers could get away with, Mamoru probably could, too.

When Masafumi-nii hit the boundaries of Mother's tolerance-- and he would because he didn't understand that there were limits-- Mamoru would be paying attention.

Six months later, on the anniversary of their father's death, Hirofumi-nii took Mamoru and Ouka to burn incense at the family graves.

Mamoru decided not to ask why Ouka was there or why Mother and Uncle Shuichi weren't.

Masafumi-nii had almost certainly forgotten.

Mamoru didn't ask, though, because there wasn't any reason to make Hirofumi-nii lie. Instead, as they watched the incense burn, Mamoru said, "Nii-san, is there anything I can study to be helpful? I want to help our family." He knew that he looked younger than he was and more vulnerable, and he hoped that that would make the question seem more earnest and less calculated.

Except that he wanted Hirofumi-nii to understand that it was an offer of alliance. Very limited alliance. 

Hirofumi-nii blinked several times. "That's a big question, Mamoru-kun." He seemed to be looking for something in Mamoru's face. "You probably don't have to think about it yet."

"I just don't want to be like Masafumi-nii. I know everyone worries about him."

Ouka looked from one of them to the other and said, "I don't want to be like him either! Tell us what we can do!"

Hirofumi-nii gave Ouka an indulgent smile that he'd never have offered Mamoru. "You don't need to worry about it, Ouka-chan. Just pick a good husband and be happy."

Ouka nodded and smiled, but it didn't look entirely genuine.

Mamoru wanted to remind Hirofumi-nii that Ouka wasn't even in high school yet and to point out that Hirofumi-nii hadn't talked about marriage as a goal for Mamoru.

Hirofumi-nii also should consider that, out of all of the children in the family, Ouka was the one whose mistakes Mother was least likely to forgive.

Mamoru didn't think that was a topic to bring up now. Or ever. Instead, he weighed his words carefully. He loved Ouka and wanted her safe, but how Mother felt about her wasn't a truth that could be spoken here. "You don't _have_ to, but you totally can." He put as much enthusiasm into the words as he could. "Mother has a lot of assistants, so I bet Hirofumi-nii will need lots later, too. If that's what makes you happy."

"Mamoru-kun is right!" Hirofumi-nii waved a hand as if trying to dismiss his previous words. "Most girls want to get married, but you're a Takatori. You can decide!"

"Really?" Ouka looked at Hirofumi-nii as if he were the source of all wisdom.

Mamoru really wished he was that good at manipulating his oldest brother.

"Really," Hirofumi-nii said firmly. "A lot of the work is boring, but you're both welcome to come with me to see what the family does."

Mamoru was pretty sure there were several things the family did that Hirofumi-nii wasn't even considering showing to two twelve year olds. He smiled as if he was proud to be trusted with whatever Hirofumi-nii considered important. "I'll ask Mother if she can teach me what she taught you, nii-san." He was more than a little proud of the chirp he managed to put into the words.

Hirofumi-nii looked startled again then he smiled. "That's a good idea, Mamoru-kun. She'll be pleased that you want to learn."

Mamoru nodded. That would let Hirofumi-nii teach Ouka-- or not-- as suited her.

The fact that she grabbed Hirofumi-nii's elbow and leaned into it made Mamoru think that Ouka, at least, understood that part. He felt a little better about not warning her; she almost certainly already knew.

Not all of it, but she knew who she could actually trust. When Mamoru's position was more secure, he might be able to be one of those people. Right now, admitting that he knew she needed allies was too dangerous.

____

Mother wasn't happy with Masafumi-nii. That wasn't new. That was entirely normal. "Three women!" Mother exclaimed. "Three! With nothing disguising it!"

In Mamoru's opinion, Mother was focusing on entirely the wrong aspect of the problems posed by Takatori Masafumi.

"And now-- an underage girl! Just moving her into his house without any pretext or apology at all!" Mother was angry enough to pace. That never boded well for the object of her wrath.

Mamoru continued reading the files he had on his laptop. No one had asked his opinion, and they likely wouldn't.

"She's sixteen," Uncle Shuichi said a little placatingly. "Not that young."

Mamoru definitely wasn't putting his foot into that trap.

Hirofumi wasn't as wise. "We could pass her off as the younger sister of one of the others."

"Only if he marries one of them," Uncle Shuichi responded. "And he refuses to."

Mamoru suspected that Masafumi-nii simply had enough sense to realize that marrying anyone would upset the precarious balance in his household. Mamoru opened another file.

"All his funding comes from us," Hirofumi-nii pointed out. "He and what's-her-name-- the one he met at university-- have been together for years."

Mother went still. "It would put him on a tighter leash. One of the other two might be more biddable."

It was almost, Mamoru thought, as if none of them had actually read the dossiers he'd put together on Masafumi's playmates. He sighed then said, "If we make Hell a Takatori, she'll use it to make Masafumi-nii head of the family. She's smart enough and ruthless enough to make a good go of it, but she'll run everything she gets her hands on into the ground to fund Masafumi-nii's research. Because she believes in it. 

"If we make Schoen a Takatori, leaving Hell out in the cold, Hell will vivisect her and find someone pretty enough to replace her. If we make Neu-- No. Not even bothering. She's legally dead and... otherwise inconvenient."

Neu-- Murase Asuka-- might be physically able to survive vivisection. Her version of batshit was different from Hell's or Masafumi-nii's, but it was not likely to be less destructive for the family. Mamoru doubted that pain or near-death would improve Neu's social skills.

Mamoru looked at Mother and then at Hirofumi. "Find someone who'll be on our side and not care if she never sees Masafumi-nii apart from the wedding. Then make sure she won't. Let her have children with someone else if it will sweeten the deal. We can make something of them because they'll be ours, legally speaking, and we'll have Hirofumi-nii's children for the main family line."

They were all staring at him.

After several seconds, Mother said softly, "Wouldn't it all be easier if Hell was dead?"

Mamoru met his mother's eyes and shook his head. "She's got a better grip on reality than Masafumi-nii does, and she's the only one of the set who'll ever tell him no." He didn't tell his mother how much Hell reminded him of her.

Mother would not take it as a compliment.

"I think..." Mamoru hesitated as he put his thoughts in order. "Hell can be bargained with. She'll try to betray us later on, of course, if she ever thinks she has sufficient advantage, but--" He took a deep breath. "I am assuming that our goal is keeping Masafumi-nii contented and alive. If I'm wrong, that changes our approach."

He was assuming that they objected more to the optics of Masafumi-nii having a sixteen year old girl as part of his harem than they were to the idea that Masafumi-nii might be fucking a sixteen year old.

"We can send the girl to a boarding school for a couple of years. Maybe the one Ouka-chan's friend, Megumi, went to after her mother died? I have the impression they're good about screening visitors and keeping their students on campus. If the girl's still interested in Masafumi-nii once she's legal--" Mamoru shrugged.

Hirofumi-nii's eyes narrowed as if he'd never really looked at Mamoru before and wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, but he didn't seem unhappy.

Mother looked a little startled but pleased.

Uncle Shuichi looked pained.

Mamoru supposed that Uncle Shuichi preferred to pretend that they were all honest, honorable, and respectable. Mamoru simply wasn't sure how Uncle Shuichi squared that with the facts. Mamoru hoped that Uncle Shuichi wasn't going to become inconvenient any time soon. No one at Kritiker would accept Mamoru as Persia for at least another decade, and Kritiker was both too useful to give up and depressingly likely to shamble on without Takatori involvement.

Kritiker slipping from family control would be much more disastrous than any of Masafumi-nii's scandals.

____

Fujimiya Ran had forgotten to charge his phone. If he'd remembered, he'd have gotten the call to tell him that the omiai had been rescheduled due to a problem with the restaurant. As it was, when he asked to be directed to his party, the man at the desk told him that he must be mistaken, that they had no such reservation. Perhaps the gentleman had mistaken the night? Perhaps the gentleman had come to the wrong restaurant?

The man looked upset, angry even, but Ran ignored it as he tried, once more, to make his phone work.

Ran glanced out at the drizzling rain. "My mother will-- Do you have a phone I might use?" He didn't want to go back out in the cold in search of a phone. 

If he really was in the wrong place, his mother would be worried. If he'd gotten the time or the date wrong, she'd know. Better to call and ask.

The man glanced over his shoulder as if he'd forgotten the pale green curtain behind him that screened the dining area from entry. "I'm sorry," he said. "Our phones are out."

Ran hesitated. "Even your pay phones?" He knew it was a ridiculous question even before he asked, but he also knew that there was something wrong.

He didn't hear voices or sounds of people eating from the other side of that curtain. He didn't smell food. He smelled--

A gaijin stepped around the curtain. He had short, dark hair and wore glasses. "Too late," he said. He gestured with his right hand which held a very lethal looking handgun, and Ran went completely cold.

He was going to die.

"You should have gone when you had the chance," the man with the gun told Ran. He glanced at the man who'd tried to make Ran leave. "Keep smiling. Our guest of honor will be here soon. We don't want her to notice anything amiss."

Ran swallowed hard and walked into the dining area.

There were two other gaijin there, one with garishly bright red hair and one with white hair and an eyepatch. The redhead had a gun. The guy with the eyepatch had knives.

There were four other people sprawled across one of the tables. Judging by the stillness and the pools of blood, they were dead.

That explained the smell.

"You're quieter," the man behind Ran said. "Try for no spatter on the curtain."

The man with the eyepatch looked at Ran. He raised one of his knives and licked it. He smiled and started to move.

Ran closed his eyes and hoped that dying wouldn't hurt too much. He heard a clatter as if someone had dropped something on the table. He heard a snarl that he thought came from where the white haired man had been. Then Ran heard words that sounded like the whine of a bored child.

"He's pretty, Crawford. Can't I keep him?"

Ran was still alive. Somehow. He swayed a little as his muscles tried to give out in relief.

"Not permanently," the man behind Ran said. He sounded both exasperated and fond. "If you want a pet, get a goldfish." Then, something hard pressed into Ran's back. "Go left," the man behind Ran said. "Sit on the table by Schuldig-- the man with red hair. Don't move. Don't speak. Don't fight. If you fuck up our job, we'll take time to kill you slow later."

Ran opened his eyes. He crossed the space to the table without even feeling that his feet were moving. He sat on the edge of the low table and hoped that shaking wouldn't count as moving.

"I like your hair." The second gunman-- Schuldig, the first gunman called him Schuldig-- tugged gently on Ran's hair. "You should wear it long." Schuldig's fingers brushed the back of Ran's neck. "Maybe I'll get to see it."

Having his hair grow out of the conservative cut required to keep his job, implied that Ran might have time. Weeks rather than minutes. He didn't know what he could do with that time--

"You'll enjoy it," Schuldig promised, whispering the words in Ran's ear. "Every second of it."

Ran had had a number of expectations about this omiai. Most of them had to do with being polite and extracting himself without committing to any further interaction. Mostly, he said no to this sort of thing, and usually his parents accepted that.

Ran hadn't expected a murderer feeling him up.

"I think you'll look best with your hands over your head," Schuldig said. "Naked, of course, so I can touch you anywhere." He worked Ran's tie loose.

Ran swallowed nausea. He kept looking at the gun in Schuldig's other hand. He'd never seen a real one before tonight. He wondered if it would sound like the ones in the movies.

"He's too perfect," the white haired man said. He frowned. "No scars."

"I like no scars," Schuldig said. "Easier to add them later than to work around what's already there." He laughed. "Bruises are better. Tidier." His fingernails were very sharp as they pressed into Ran's skin.

Ran hoped that he'd gotten the restaurant wrong, that he'd gotten the date wrong. He hoped that there was no chance of Miss Takahashi wandering into this. Better she think he stood her up than... than this.

"Is she pretty?" Schuldig breathed the words into Ran's ear again.

Ran flinched then forced himself still. He tried to turn his head, but Schuldig's grip was too tight. He wondered how Schuldig knew.

"I know everything," Schuldig told him.

Schuldig must have heard Ran talking to the man out front. They all must have. That explained it.

Ran stared at the wall opposite him and wished he'd told his mother no this time, too. He was only a year into his first job, after all, and could have argued that he wasn't in a position to consider marriage. He wasn't even twenty five, yet.

He'd thought he'd have time to tell his parents that he was never going to want a wife, that he wasn't willing to marry and pretend to be normal, and get them to understand. He'd have done it eventually, just not this year. Next year. Definitely next year.

After his father finished recovering from the heart attack that almost killed him. After his sister came home from studying in France.

At the moment, his mother needed one part of the family that she could rely on to be what she expected. Ran could do that for now, and she wanted to see him trying to find a nice woman who'd accept a long engagement. "Teaching is respectable," she'd told him. "Nice and steady. Girls like that."

"A teacher?" Schuldig sounded surprised, but Ran thought that surprise was fake. "You're going to be so much fun."

How did Schuldig know that?

The white haired man stepped in front of Ran and bent to study his face. "You'll be dead before midnight," he announced with ghoulish glee.

Ran wanted to curl in on himself, but he knew that would count as moving. He didn't want to die.

But, if he was going to die anyway, maybe it was better to get it over with?

"Do I have time to get him naked?" Schuldig asked. He licked Ran's ear. "I at least want to see his ass."

Ran should have invented a girlfriend. One of his friends had suggested it. Ran knew it would have been a disaster in the making, but it wouldn't have been _this_ disaster. He wouldn't be here, now, and he'd probably be alive, later, to be ashamed of the lie when he finally came out to his parents.

"Incoming," the dark haired man said sharply. He waved toward the back of the restaurant. "Weiss."

Schuldig said something with harsh edges that sounded like a curse. It wasn't Japanese, and it wasn't English. His free hand wrapped around Ran's throat and squeezed. "I'll find you later. I know your name. I know where you live. I know where you work." He shoved Ran back and off the side of the table.

Ran rolled with the force and tried to shield his head as he went over. There were too many hard edges for any sort of safe fall, but he really didn't want to be too unconscious or too concussed to take advantage of his captors' distraction.

He crawled toward the wall because it was better than lying on the floor, waiting to die. He heard rapid gunfire and breaking furniture. He heard what had to be steel hitting steel.

He ended up in a corner with his arms over his head as he watched the trio of murderers clash with four fast moving blurs. He wasn't sure whether the newcomers winning would be better for him, but he was pretty sure it couldn't be any worse.

He couldn't really follow who was doing what. His years of kendo were long behind him, and that had been sufficiently formalized to have nothing much in common with the brutal fight he was watching.

None of the newcomers seemed to have guns, so Ran expected them to die.

Then the noise stopped. The gunmen were gone. Three members of the other group were bleeding. The fourth, a tall man with bleached hair, was looking directly at Ran and appeared to be trying to make a decision.

"I know a little first aid," Ran said. He was proud that his voice barely trembled. "If that would help."

"You should run," the man staring at Ran said. One gloved hand released what it was holding and moved to press against the watch on his other wrist.

Ran heard something move with a hissing slide. Wire probably. Ran made himself stand up. "He-- The red haired man said he knew where I live."

"Don't be an asshole, Balinese," one of the other men said as he pressed a bandage against his thigh. He had a bladed glove on one hand and another on the floor next to him that Ran guessed must have come off the other hand.

Ran supposed that having knives strapped to one's hands made first aid challenging.

Balinese turned to look at the man who'd spoken. "He'll be better off if he was never here." He glanced at Ran. "It's not like we don't know who they were, so if you weren't here, everyone will probably leave you alone."

Ran doubted that. He pretended that his legs weren't trembling, that he didn't desperately want to flee. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to have refused his mother's suggestion of an omiai.

He was pretty sure that, if he went anywhere alone, he was going to end up with a bullet in his head. Best case.

Schuldig's threats had been pretty specifically sexual. 

Ran was going to have to go out the door eventually, though. He glanced toward the front of the restaurant and shook his head. He gestured at the other two men, one of whom was bleeding from a scalp wound that Ran hoped was minor and pressing a tablecloth against the last man's abdomen. "If I leave with you, there'll be five targets and two people who haven't been shot."

"If you leave with us," Balinese said with a warning in his voice, "you may never get out again."

Ran wanted to heed that warning. He also knew that he'd never be able to stop wondering when Schuldig-- or one of the other two-- would return for him. If they didn't ever, he'd wonder. He'd ask the wrong sort of questions, and all of this horror would follow him, either to work or to his family. "I won't anyway," he said. "It might make you feel better if you don't see it happen, but it won't be any better for me. I saw this. I saw them. I saw you."

Schuldig had wanted to see his ass.

"Above our paygrade," the guy with the thigh wound said. He shrugged. "Who knows? He might have seen something useful, and we really ought to know more about him before--"

Balinese looked pissed off. He turned his back on both Ran and the guy with the thigh wound.

Ran took that as Balinese understanding that both of them had a point.

The guy with the thigh wound made an obscene gesture at Balinese's back then hissed and went back to applying pressure on his leg.

"There was a man by the door," Ran said. "He was terrified." 

Balinese peered around the curtain and shook his head. "No one there now. He must have run."

Ran wondered if that was true or if Balinese was still trying to keep Ran ignorant. Probably not. If Ran went out the front door, he'd see whether or not there was a corpse. He considered the three wounded men, trying to decide how he could be most helpful.

"I have extra bandages," the man with the thigh wound said. He nodded toward the other two injured men. "It would help if you get the blood out of his eyes."

As Ran wrapped the head wound, he avoided looking at the man on the ground. He kept not looking as he used a cloth napkin to try to wipe blood from his patient's face.

Ran suspected that, if the man on the floor wasn't dead already, he didn't have much time left. He needed a hospital and a surgeon.

Ran hoped his parents wouldn't worry too much, but given the blood and corpses left behind, he thought they'd end up in an entirely justified panic. Ran, after all, wasn't even sure why he wasn't dead.

Balinese paced, checking the front of the restaurant and then crossing back to peer through the kitchen doors. Over and over and over.

Ran wanted to scream at Balinese to stop, but Ran understood that the man was watching for an attack.

"Help's coming," the man with the thigh wound said. "We'll be getting an actual ambulance for Somali. It'll be fine."

Ran knew it wouldn't be, but he appreciated that someone was making an effort.

____

Mamoru hated to admit that he'd misjudged Hell.

She obviously intended to gain control of every scrap of power that the Takatori family had accumulated. She'd waited to act until eighteen months after Masafumi-nii married Nakamura Yoshino. She'd waited to act until after Mamoru and his mother had both been distracted by other urgent matters. By the time she did act, she and Masafumi had managed to relocate all of their research projects and had gone into hiding.

Mother had not been pleased when she realized that her people had completely lost track of her second son.

No one in the family had died yet, but Uncle Shuichi had lost a leg during an attack that seemed to have been aimed at Hirofumi-nii, and there had been two attempts to abduct Grandfather and one to abduct Ouka.

If Hell managed to kidnap Grandfather, he'd probably die before she managed to figure out which drugs he was on. Based on that, Mamoru had focused on protecting the rest of the family.

Hirofumi-nii was old enough to be taken seriously as long as the rest of the family stood with him; the old man had more value as a corpse than as an invalid.

Mamoru hadn't yet been cold enough to make sure that his grandfather died quietly, but he expected he'd get there eventually. Right now, he needed to see how Hell attempted her third try at abduction. 

The first time, they'd been lucky; one of Hell's minions had tripped while they were trying to get Grandfather down the stairs. The resulting racket had roused half the household. The would-be kidnappers had escaped.

The second time, Kritiker had been watching. A red haired German man had attempted to get in with Grandfather's second shift nurse, Ito-san, the one who'd been with them the longest. She was convinced that Schneider-kun was a trainee from her old school, very highly recommended, and every one of Mother's guards who'd met him swore his background was clean. They remembered double and triple checking to verify before they let him in.

The man's paperwork was entirely valid, but there was nothing behind the paper. No fellow students who remembered meeting the man. No instructors who recalled teaching him or had referred him to Ito-san. No neighbors who'd seen him collecting his mail. The lease and the transcript and the records of tuition payments all officially existed. There was even a record of his arrival in Japan that looked real.

Crashers had warned Mamoru in time for him to fabricate a reason to delay the shift change, and he'd taken the opportunity to summon Weiss. He had been-- and still was-- concerned about how readily everyone had opened doors for the German. He'd wanted a capable sniper with a sedative dart.

Weiss hadn't gotten there in time to keep Schneider from vanishing. Mamoru's family home was a little too far from the flower shop where the members of Weiss worked for rapid deployment at three in the afternoon.

At first, Mamoru had assumed that the red hair was a wig because anyone with hair that memorable would be a fool not to dye it, but he'd turned up in surveillance footage several times, before and after, at places and times that hinted at a connection to Masafumi-nii and to Hell.

He went by Schuldig and was generally seen with three other men-- well, two men and a boy-- an American named Brad Crawford, a nameless white haired man who very much liked slitting throats, and a Japanese boy who could-- somehow-- hurl multiple people into the air. From a distance.

Mamoru hadn't been able to pin down exactly what the quartet was trying to accomplish. He didn't think that their agenda matched Hell's or Masafumi-nii's, not exactly, but his people were finding more connections between the two groups. He didn't think that Schuldig and his companions were amateurs, but Mamoru also knew that his people ought to be more challenged, possibly even outmatched.

Mamoru kept losing his best investigators. The pattern of the losses suggested that it had more to do with them getting close to real information than it did with that arm of the organization being specifically targeted. Kritiker was bleeding, so were the enterprises Mother and Hirofumi-nii oversaw, but most of the people dying weren't mission critical, not when taken one at a time or even ten at a time.

Most of the deaths seemed aimed at unbalancing their organization, at keeping them on high alert, at provoking mistakes. Mamoru just couldn't figure out why.

He also didn't think that Hell would make the mistake of crippling the empire she hoped to rule. Her ends would be better served by a handful of targeted assassinations.

Schuldig's team clearly wanted attention from the Takatori family, and their performance was exactly dangerous enough that it couldn't be ignored without ever posing a serious threat to any member of the family.

Mamoru and Hirofumi-nii had still taken steps to remove Ouka from the line of fire. Officially, she'd gone skiing in Switzerland. The second layer of cover suggested a series of ocean cruises with friends from high school. The third layer of cover involved a survivalist compound in Colorado. Even Mother and Uncle Shuichi thought that one of those stories was true.

Actually, Ouka was in France. She was participating in an international program that trained first responders for large scale natural disasters. Mamoru had wanted something lower profile for her, but she'd talked Mamoru around.

"Hell thinks I'm frivolous," she said as she studied the fingernails on her left hand. "Because I flirt, mostly, but also because I pay attention to menu planning and seating charts and how much people spend on clothing and art." She looked up and gave Mamoru a hard look. "I may be Sakaki Himiko for a very long time, and this training will let me travel without coming back to Japan. It's also-- People stop doing it without needing to explain why."

Hirofumi-nii looked at her as if she'd said something profound. He looked proud.

Mamoru had to remind himself-- again-- that Hirofumi-nii hadn't turned fourteen until after Ouka was born. Hirofumi-nii was too young to be her father, and even if he'd somehow managed it, him as her father wouldn't need to be a dark family secret.

Mamoru gave about equal odds to the idea of Ouka being their aunt and to the idea of Ouka being their half-sister. Either would explain most of the anomalies in her official history. Neither answer would change how Mamoru regarded her, so he'd never tried digging.

He probably wouldn't ever unless she asked for his help finding answers. She probably wouldn't ask Mamoru because Hirofumi-nii had to know. Asking directly would be simpler than searching for twenty year old clues or trying to find a sufficiently discreet lab to do some genetic testing.

But, if twenty year old clues were needed, better that Mamoru do the looking than that Ouka did. Mother might not want either of them to know, but Mother was more willing to indulge Mamoru's disobediences and indiscretions than she was Ouka's.

"Ouka-chan--" Mamoru hesitated and glanced at Hirofumi-nii. Mamoru reconsidered what he'd been about to say. "We'll be glad to have you back when it's safe."

Mamoru would understand entirely if she chose never to come back, but 'when it's safe' gave Hirofumi-nii something softer and less definite than 'never.' They'd almost certainly get 'safer' eventually, but 'safe' was always going to be an aspiration more than a reality.

Ouka ought to have room to decide what she considered 'safe enough,' and she might well find that she was happier not being a Takatori.

So Mamoru put considerably more effort into the Sakaki Himiko identity than he would have if he'd expected her to be temporary. Himiko would be able to go anywhere, to marry anyone-- or no one. She'd be dead of old age before the paperwork frayed.

He also made sure that Ouka knew how to become Takatori again if all of the rest of them died while she was hidden. He told her that part when Hirofumi-nii wasn't there. "I don't think it will come to that," he told her, "and it's not... If it does happen, sell it all and invest in-- I don't know-- Cat cafes? Libraries? Scholarships? Something you'll feel good about, anyway."

He wasn't looking at her as he spoke, so he was surprised when she came up behind him and hugged him. 

"Mamoru-kun, I think that's the kindest command anyone's ever given me." She sounded like she meant it, and he felt a little wetness where she pressed her face against his shoulder.

"We've both watched the Takatori name devouring Hirofumi-nii," Mamoru said. "I don't want you to feel obligated to feed the monster in our memory, and I don't want him to know that I'm considering what happens if we lose."

Her arms tightened a little. "I wish you could come with me."

Mamoru closed his eyes for a moment. "You don't. I'm my mother's son; you'd never be able to trust me."

She sniffed, sounding more thoughtful than sad. "Whatever Uncle Reiji did had to build up for more than fifteen years."

Mamoru shrugged. "She had to have been preparing for it the whole time. It's what I would have done." He pulled away then turned to face Ouka. "I'd hope that I wouldn't have to-- to take steps, but I'd have been trying to be ready, just in case."

"I can only leave because you stayed."

"I'd be staying even if you weren't going," Mamoru assured her, "but I'm glad someone is going."

She took a step back and studied his face. "You've been trying to be ready for--" She waved her hand as if indicating every disaster in the recent months. "--this all your life."

He managed a laugh. "Not all of it. There was swimming and ice cream and--" He shook his head. He could come up with long lists of things he'd enjoyed about his life. "If I let myself get eaten by the Takatori name, I wouldn't ever be any help to anyone. The name's the least important part."

"Oh, Mamoru-kun." Ouka sounded almost heartbroken. "That's worse."

That was when he became certain that Sakaki Himiko would be the rest of Ouka's life. He gave her a smile with teeth. "It's better because I don't have to worry about how we look or how we're remembered, only whether we survive. I can be vindictive and crude and criminal. If I need to be.

"Mostly, I'm sorry that I can't send Hirofumi-nii with you."

____

The ambulance took them to a hospital. Well, Ran thought it was a hospital. He didn't get to see it from the outside, and none of the rooms had windows. The elevator had gone downward, too, so they were probably underground. That would limit the scenic options.

Would a glass pane with dirt pressed against one side even count as a window? Ran supposed that it could be like the glass side of an ant farm or of one of those exhibits to let school children watch the process of vermicomposting. Ran had the impression that young children found that fascinating.

He really ought to be worrying more about whether or not he was going to survive the night. His rescuers were less murderous and less creepy than the gaijin who'd threatened him, but he suspected that simply meant that, when the newcomers killed him, it wouldn't involve torture.

He sat in a small room, waiting to see what would happen next. There were eight chairs pressed against the walls of the room with the door in one corner and two small tables and a television set in the others. If Ran had lain on the dirty carpet, he wouldn't have had to stretch much to touch the front and back walls at the same time.

There were magazines on both tables and a remote that Ran assumed went with the television. He flipped through a magazine that mixed celebrity gossip with diet and fitness advice. Ran was a little dubious that anyone could survive entirely on pickled vegetables. Well, could was different from should. He couldn't imagine it would be healthy. Possibly if a person also ate rice...

After a while-- it might have been ten minutes; it might have been more than an hour-- Balinese came in. He offered Ran a cup.

"Coffee. Hot with lots of sugar. You probably need it."

Ran took the cup eagerly. He held it so that the steam would hit his face, so that he could smell the siren lure that coffee always extended.

"It's okay to freak out," Balinese said. "I'm pretty sure this isn't how you thought your evening would go."

Ran sipped his coffee to test the temperature. It was scalding, so he lowered the cup a bit. "I expected less blood," he admitted. "No guns. No murder. No..." He wasn't even sure he had words for Schuldig's threats. "He put his tongue in my ear." He heard the plaintive note in his voice and started to flush before he even realized what he'd just said. He covered his face with the hand that wasn't holding his coffee.

"That's more human than those assholes usually are." Balinese kept his eyes fixed on the blank television screen.

"It wasn't-- I was going to _die_." Ran felt himself start to shake. "I was going to die because of an _omiai_ that I didn't even want." He felt Balinese take back the cup of coffee.

"You're safe now, bystander-san." Balinese's voice sounded as if he hoped Ran would believe it.

"Safer," Ran said. His voice sounded very distant to his own ears. "Safer or, maybe, safe for the moment. Those aren't the same as safe." Part him thought that he was being pedantic rather than clear, but the distinction felt desperately important.

"For the moment," Balinese said amiably. "That's all any of us get. This is a secure facility, and there's a free bed down the hall that you're welcome to use. A shower even. The room's warm."

"I'm supposed to work tomorrow." Ran's fingers pressed hard into his forehead. "But he knows where I work. I can't. But if I don't--" He made himself lower his hands and look directly at Balinese's face. "I teach junior high. History. First and second years."

Balinese suddenly looked more alert and more concerned.

Ran was glad he didn't have to spell out the fear that was going to give him nightmares.

"Which school?"

"Kamata."

"Right." Balinese stood. "Come on. I'm not leaving you alone. Siberian's watching a movie. You can fetch and carry for him for a while."

Ran let Balinese steer him out of the room and down a corridor.

Siberian turned out to be the guy with the thigh wound.

Ran supposed he should have figured that out. He would have if his brain was working properly. The guy with the head wound wouldn't need someone to fetch and carry, and Somali was probably still in surgery.

Unless Somali was dead.

Ran really, really hoped that Somali wasn't dead. Ran hadn't known any of the corpses at the restaurant before they became corpses, but he'd seen Somali breathing and bleeding. Ran had a name for him.

Somali dying would be very differently real.

Siberian was propped up in a hospital bed which Ran supposed made sense. He was wearing different clothing, not a hospital gown but a gray t-shirt. His lower body was covered by blankets, but Ran suspected, based on the topography of the blankets, that his bad leg was on pillows.

Ran wondered what sort of benefit came from raising an injured leg if the wound was still going to be below heart level.

"I'm going to need your wallet, bystander-san," Balinese said, and Ran realized that he'd missed Balinese explaining things to Siberian.

Ran pulled out his wallet and handed it over. Then he emptied his pockets, handing each item to Balinese. "If you charge my phone, that has all the numbers. You can tell them I won't be in." He supposed that Balinese didn't want his breath mints, so he pushed those aside. Would Balinese need his pen? He hesitated as he wondered whether or not he ought to offer Balinese a business card. Was it too late? Was there an etiquette for delaying introductions like this?

What would Ran's mother say?

"My mother--" For a moment, he couldn't breathe because he wanted his mother there with him. "She'll be waiting to hear all about Miss-- Miss-- I know her name. I do. I saw a picture, too, and it would be rude to forget her name. If I was at the wrong restaurant, that was rude, too. I didn't want to be, but--"

"Fujimiya-san," Siberian said firmly. "Come and sit down. Bring your coffee."

Ran left the contents of his pockets with Balinese. The man could have the pen and the breath mints and the lint. Ran sat in the chair to Siberian's left and wondered how he'd missed Balinese telling Siberian Ran's name. Ran wondered, too, what had happened to his coffee.

"Is caffeine even a good idea right now?" Ran hadn't meant to ask. "It's late. I might-- I should sleep tonight, right?"

"You don't have anywhere to be," Siberian told him. "Sit and watch this movie with me. I think the chick with bleached hair is supposed to be a kitsune, but I missed the first half hour or so. It'll just be you and me in here, so you can take the other bed if you get tired. Korat wants dark and quiet, so he's in the next room. Balinese probably won't sleep for a while yet, but he can bunk with Korat."

Korat must be the guy with the head wound.

Siberian coaxed Ran into drinking his coffee before it got cold. Siberian swore that it was decaf and no worse than if Ran had had green tea with dinner.

Siberian summoned a nurse who brought in heated blankets for Ran and promised food.

"I'm supposed to fetch and carry for you," Ran protested.

The look Siberian leveled at Ran announced clearly that Siberian didn't believe that Ran had bought that line of bullshit.

Ran reached for something else that would tell him what to do. "He-- Balinese-- took my cards. I should give you one. I should have--"

"Nope." Siberian held up a hand to interrupt Ran's words. "This is informal."

"You can't keep calling me 'bystander-san,'" Ran knew it was true. Also, Balinese had his wallet and his business cards, so Balinese now knew his name. "Fujimiya Ran."

Siberian was in no position to bow, but he nodded. He seemed to be hesitating.

"I can call you Siberian-san," Ran told him. "That's fine. Though maybe... Have you considered wearing masks like all those vigilantes in US comics?"

"Considered? Yes, of course, but there are a lot of... drawbacks. Different masks, different drawbacks, but not a one that quite works." Siberian started ticking them off on his fingers. "Limits visual field. Prone to falling off. Too hard to take off in the field. Breathing issues. Interferes with wearing our coms. Heavy. Expensive. Not actually helpful as a disguise." He shrugged. "Some jobs, it's worth it, but Schwarz already knows who we are, and there are a lot of times we just walk into a place through the front door."

Ran had no answer for that, so he said nothing.

Siberian frowned and turned to the television. "There's got to be something better on." He lifted the remote and started flipping channels. "Tell me if you see something you'd like to watch."

____

Mamoru opened the program for a game of Set! He let his eyes scan the cards. His laptop would end the program after twenty minutes. At that point, he'd either be done considering the repercussions of Weiss's most recent encounter with Schwarz or need to find a different form of meditative distraction.

Balinese's report-- very tentatively-- stated his belief that Fujimiya Ran had merely been unfortunate enough to blunder into the ambush Schwarz had laid for Mother.

 _If he's a trap, he doesn't know it,_ wasn't by any measure a ringing endorsement of Fujimiya's trustworthiness, but Balinese wasn't given to ringing endorsements. _He's scared shitless of Schuldig coming after him,_ was rather a firmer statement.

Diamonds, ovals, squiggles. Red, green, purple.

Kritiker using Fujimiya as bait might be something Schwarz intended. In that case, Mamoru might be better off ignoring the option. Or not. Mamoru would still be choosing the ground. 

Still, Schuldig's interest had been, according to Fujimiya, abrupt, based on whim, and very definitely sexual.

Mamoru didn't know enough about Schuldig's teammates to know if they would allow such indulgences in the middle of an operation. The odds favored them having actually expected Mother to show up for her monthly dinner with her Aunt Kaede. The odds also favored it have been intended as a kidnapping rather than an assassination.

Hirofumi-nii might sacrifice Mother, but Uncle Shuichi wouldn't, and Aunt Kaede-- Hirofumi-nii was sentimental about Aunt Kaede and, really, about all of his relatives who weren't Mother, Uncle Schuichi, or Grandfather.

Mamoru highlighted three cards, considered the entire spread, and shook his head. He chose another potential set and cleared that instead.

Mamoru might take hostages to force Hirofumi-nii and Uncle Shuichi to negotiate if he were on the other side, but Mamoru liked to think that, if he were in that position, he wouldn't assume that neutralizing Mother, Uncle Shuichi, and Hirofumi-nii swept the board.

Mamoru still had the brightly colored, cat patterned quilt that Aunt Kaede had given him when he was three. He treasured it and hoped he might be able to pass it on to another child some day, but he wouldn't hesitate to let Aunt Kaede die if it frustrated Hell and Masafumi-nii's attempts to obtain control of the family's holdings.

Mamoru wouldn't enjoy the steps he'd have to take to prevent Hirofumi-nii and Uncle Schuichi from surrendering, but he already had plans in place for them and for Mother. Just in case.

Mamoru started a new game.

He still didn't know what Schwarz was after. They might actually be thugs for hire, but Mamoru doubted it. His people hadn't managed to find any indication that anyone else had ever hired them, not singly, not as a team. Schwarz was too good to be that new.

Also, neither Masafumi-nii nor Hell had the right connections to find a group this flexibly competent and low profile. Ipso facto, Schwarz had found Hell and Masafumi-nii.

Provoking internecine war for the hell of it seemed unlikely as a long term hobby, and Schwarz was spending money Hell didn't have.

Which brought Mamoru back to the question of Fujimiya Ran.

The exterior security cameras from the jewelry store across the street from Tadashi showed Fujimiya walking into the restaurant less than fifteen minutes before Weiss had arrived. Less than ten minutes, even. Fujimiya's phone had been dead, and he'd missed calls from his mother and from the restaurant. The messages left supported his tale of bad luck.

The fact that the restaurant had called two hours in advance to cancel Fujimiya's reservation hinted at some advance planning on Schwarz's side, but two hours wasn't enough notice if they really didn't want collateral damage. There was a curious lack of kitchen and waitstaff among the corpses, however, and the kitchen had been cold when Weiss arrived.

Mamoru suspected that Schwarz hadn't particularly wanted to sit with thirty plus corpses while they waited for Mother to arrive. Also, nobody was good enough to murder that many people in a place like Tadashi without attracting outside attention.

Fujimiya's survival was still anomalous. His breakdown afterward would have been hard to fake but possible. There was no indication that he'd previously met any member of Schwarz, however, and the time window for Schuldig to have tampered with his mind was small.

And someone, probably Schuldig, had left a box of mildly poisoned chocolates on Fujimiya's bed. Someone had written 'Thinking of you' on Fujimiya's mirror in red nail polish and surrounded the words with hearts in a different, sparkly shade of nail polish.

Kritiker was still dismantling Fujimiya's possessions, but they'd cleared a few things to be sent on to him.

Mamoru closed his game and made a note to make sure that Fujimiya's rent was paid for the next three months. Just in case they needed access. Just in case Schuldig came back.

He was going to have to meet Fujimiya Ran. If the man was part of a trap, Mamoru would have to spring it.

Faint heart never won a single damned thing.

____

By the third day in the 'secure facility,' Ran was starting to worry about things like losing his job and what horrors were likely growing in his refrigerator. Those were small next to the things Schuldig had threatened, but they would clearly get bigger the longer he stayed where he was.

He didn't mind sharing a room with Siberian-- They played Mario Kart and cards. They watched television. They talked about football-- or eating an occasional meal with Korat and arguing with him about historical and current views of the Shinsengumi or discussing the factors that led to Minamoto no Yoritomo becoming Shogun.

Time with Siberian was more laid back, so that tended to be when Ran talked about his job and his family and how glad he was that he'd decided not to get a cat.

After Ran talked about the non-existent cat, Siberian looked serious and said, "If you had-- had gotten a cat, I mean-- you know we'd have sent someone to get it, right?"

Ran nodded even though he still wasn't sure. "There's no cat," he said, "so it doesn't matter, but I did notice someone got my clothes." There was some comfort in a bathrobe that felt like home.

His toiletries were all new but were the brands he usually bought. He refused to ask whether the newness was because someone else had tossed his apartment first or because they might have. There was no point. He simply allowed himself to feel better about the toothpaste and the shampoo because there was no chance that Schuldig had touched them.

Ran understood that both men were writing reports on what he said and what he did. He thought they'd admit as much if he asked directly, but it was easier all around if everyone pretended that he hadn't realized that all of the exits were locked.

Balinese was the one who'd taken Ran's statement and who kept calling Ran back to that tiny waiting room for 'just one more question.' It wasn't adversarial, but Balinese wasn't trying to get Ran to like him.

Weirdly, going over the his time at Tadashi repeatedly, second by second, made it seem more distant to Ran. He was no longer sure what color the screening curtain had been. Well, green, certainly, but what shade? He couldn't see it in his mind any more, and he wasn't sure if there had been flowers on the tables or condiments or...

Surely it didn't matter if he forgot? He didn't want to keep the terror of waiting, eyes closed, for a knife in the throat.

They'd wanted him to die quietly. The knife probably would have cut his throat.

Ran also didn't want to hold onto the smell of blood and death or the fear that he was going to see one of his rescuers bleed out after the fighting was done.

Somali was fine. He was awake. He was going to recover. He'd just be moving to a desk job. Not a promotion, not a demotion, just different.

Ran wondered if it was any sort of secure employment. Did these people have pension plans? Survivor benefits? Company picnics? Child care?

He tried to imagine any of the people he'd met here having children and found himself really glad that he, himself, didn't. It was bad enough wondering if Schuldig might harm Ran's parents.

Aya-chan was still in France. That was, Ran hoped, too far for someone like Schuldig to travel for recreational cruelty. He'd asked Balinese about it, though, and Balinese had said, "He's busy. We'd definitely notice if he disappeared for that long."

Balinese had also given Ran a long, appraising look and added, "Your parents have taken a trip to New Zealand. For your father's health. He keeps trying to work, so your mother's removing him from temptation."

Ran supposed that the neighbors might believe that. "Thank you," he said.

"Wasn't my call," Balinese said. "I mean, I don't object, and I'd have recommended it, but nobody asked me."

"Still," Ran said. "You've all been..." He shrugged. "Kinder than you have to be, I guess."

"Better than rock bottom terrible isn't much."

Ran shrugged again. "I'm hoping not to-- Well, this is different from that but not. You know. I feel like this and that aren't things that happen often. How many times am I likely to run into people with weapons like that?"

"Once makes twice more likely," Balinese said. "Twice... That's life changing shit."

In other words, Ran shouldn't expect to go back to his job and his moldy leftovers. Ran thought about it for a moment and decided that he was glad that everyone else was willing to pretend. That made it so much easier to restrain his terrified anger by letting him avoid wondering why it had to happen to him.

He wasn't going to beat his fists against locked doors. He wasn't going to try to take a hostage. He wasn't even going to raise his voice. After all, running from these people-- who were, overall, being gentle with him-- would leave him with the much nastier problem of Schuldig.

However unreal other details became, Ran still remembered Schuldig saying _I'll find you later_ as if it was a certainty. That memory always felt like one of those chestburster aliens trying to hatch.

After lunch on the third day, Siberian said, "I hear it's sunny. You willing to push my chair so that we can catch a bit of it? There's a garden on the roof. Sort of a garden." He wobbled his hand back and forth. "A lot of concrete boxes with bushes and whatever flowers are cheap to plant this month."

Ran wanted to see the sun, so he nodded. He also wanted the trust that was implied by allowing him to leave the floor where they'd been staying.

The elevator was on the other side of a locked door that Korat opened for them. Getting the elevator to the roof required a retinal scan from Siberian.

"How long will you need the wheelchair?" Ran asked as he pushed Siberian's chair out of the elevator and onto a surface that looked like it had been a parking lot in a previous life.

Well, apart from the fact that they had to be at least six floors up.

"I don't absolutely need it now," Siberian replied. "I could get by with crutches."

Ran had noticed that Siberian had bruises on his upper body, so he suspected that getting by with crutches would be unpleasant. Also probably against medical advice.

The nurses in the secure facility were scarier than Balinese was.

"I thought about bringing a deck of cards," Siberian said. "For something to do, I mean. I just thought they'd blow away."

Ran could feel a fairly stiff breeze, so he also thought they'd blow away. "Which table do you want?" He could see three, but there was a man he didn't recognize sitting at one of them, a man who was very much overdressed for a rooftop garden with wilting flowers and scraggly bushes.

Ran was almost certain that that suit was bespoke and worth at least a month's rent.

Rent. That would be due in a couple of weeks. He had enough savings to pay it even if he lost his job, but he wasn't sure there'd be a point in keeping the place at that point.

"Company or no company?" Siberian asked. He even managed to make it sound like it really was up to Ran.

"I shouldn't make your boss wait," Ran replied as quietly as he could manage while still being heard. "He is, isn't he?"

Siberian sighed. "Apprentice boss," he admitted, "but more... more understanding than the boss boss." He turned in the chair, trying to see Ran's face. "He's a lot less likely to fuck you over."

Ran could see that the twisting hurt Siberian, so he said, "Stop that!" and pushed the chair toward the waiting man.

"Fine." Siberian made a grumbling noise but settled. As they got closer, he added, "You can call him Persia."

Ran blinked as the waiting man stood and turned to look at him. Ran wondered if that meant he was supposed to pretend that he didn't recognize the youngest Takatori brother or if no one realized that he would.

The younger two Takatori brothers weren't really public figures, but his mother had joked a time or two about it not being impossible that Aya-chan could marry Takatori Mamoru, and Aya-chan had retaliated by finding a photograph that she could turn into a poster. Then mother suggested that Aya-chan's father could actually introduce her because Mamoru usually came in with his mother when she came in for meetings.

And then Aya-chan had made Ran go with her to shop for eye-catching clothes that both of them knew their mother would never let her wear.

It had never even remotely been about Takatori Mamoru.

Given current circumstances, Ran really, really, really hoped that Aya-chan had thrown out that poster before she left for France. The second best alternative would be that Takatori Mamoru had a sense of humor and understood that it wasn't meant to be creepy.

Even if it was.

Aya-chan and their mother had a much happier relationship now that Aya-chan wasn't living at home or even within commuting distance of home. Neither of them felt compelled to escalate.

"My father works-- used to work-- for his mother," Ran muttered.

Siberian shrugged. "And you're going to work for him. Probably. Eventually. For a while anyway."

Ran supposed that them swapping his babysitters from time to time meant that all of them knew whatever was going on. He tried not to feel irritated about it as he maneuvered Siberian up to a part of the table that was free of chairs.

Once Siberian had locked the wheels, Ran stepped back and offered a polite bow. "Fujimiya Ran," he said. He reached for his cards because this was absolutely a person he ought to approach with utmost courtesy, but Balinese hadn't given those back to him.

Balinese hadn't even given Ran back his pocket lint.

Ran didn't hold it against him. Much.

Somebody had to be the designated asshole, and Balinese was very good at it. He just didn't always remember that that was his role, mostly but not every moment. The slips might have been deliberate, though. Ran suspected that nicotine withdrawal sharpened Balinese's temper. The man always smelled a little of cigarettes, but Ran had never seen him light up.

Takatori returned Ran's bow with one of the same depth. "A pleasure," he said. "Please sit." He gestured at the chairs, one to either side of where Siberian was parked. Takatori's smile didn't quite reach his eyes, but it also didn't seem dismissive or deceptive, more as if the man intended to follow all the niceties but understood that the circumstances that brought them together were too serious for smiles to be appropriate.

Ran pulled out the chair to Siberian's left, the one that Takatori hadn't been using before he stood to greet them.

When they were both seated, Takatori took several seconds to study Ran's face. Then Takatori nodded once. "If you're willing, Fujimiya-san, I think we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. Schuldig threatened you, and he will follow through. I want him captured or dead, and you..." Takatori raised his eyebrows. "Would I be mistaken in thinking you'd prefer him gone?"

"I have a family, Takatori-san," Ran replied because he wasn't immediately ready to commit to the implied risks. Then he remembered his parents' expedited vacation. He owed Takatori for that, didn't he?

Takatori's smile this time was more genuine. "So do I. Let's help each other to protect our families."

Ran wanted his family to be able to come home, so he nodded. "I can do anything-- almost anything-- for that."


End file.
